Evidence of meeting #135 for Canadian Heritage in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was artistic.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB
It's just my concern that we only have one hour with the witnesses today. They heroically came on very short notice, so I'm keen to move forward with the meeting and to discuss, at our earliest convenience, the details with respect to the motion that we passed in the House.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
Thank you very much.
Saying that, then, we have one hour—until 5.30—with our witnesses today.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
We've been talking for a good 10 minutes already, and I think an hour with the witnesses we've got today will be short.
If the entire committee agrees, and to ensure that we have the full time with the witnesses, of course, can we ask them right now if they are available to stay for a full hour and go past 5:30 p.m.?
Is everybody okay with that?
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
We're fine.
How about you people? You're fine. Everybody's fine.
Are the Conservatives and Liberals fine to go to about 5:40 p.m., which would be an hour?
Thank you. We'll deal with this, then, on Monday. I just thought that I would get ahead of everybody, but I see that Monday is when we're going to talk about it.
Welcome, guests.
As an individual, we have Yipeng Ge, family doctor. Thank you for coming here today to talk about freedom of expression.
From the Canadian Constitution Foundation, we have Christine Van Geyn, litigation director. We also have with us, from the France-Québec collective research chair on contemporary issues of freedom of expression, Mathilde Barraband, co-chair; and Pierre Rainville, co-chair.
We'll get to you in a moment, but the procedure here is five minutes for each of the three groups.
Mathilde and Pierre, you can share your five minutes if you wish because you're one organization, and then we'll move on.
Mr. Ge, I will give you the floor for five minutes for your opening statement, please.
Dr. Yipeng Ge Family Doctor, As an Individual
Thank you. Good afternoon.
My name is Yipeng Ge. I'm a family doctor currently practising in primary care and refugee health in Ottawa.
I completed medical school at the University of Ottawa and was awarded the Anne C. Amberg Prize, a convocation award for the best combination of academic accomplishment and sensitivity to community health issues.
I completed my master's of public health and health and social behaviour with a certificate in public health leadership from Harvard University. Also, as a scholar and practitioner of anti-racism and health equity, I was on the Canadian Institutes of Health Research anti-racism advisory committee, and I helped develop anti-racism education for the University of Ottawa's department of family medicine.
During my time at Harvard University, which was when I first visited Palestine, I deepened my learning on settler colonialism and bearing witness to apartheid and occupation as determinants of Palestinian health, as this has been my area of study here on Turtle Island related to indigenous health in Canada.
I was a resident in public health and preventive medicine at the University of Ottawa's faculty of medicine. I sat on faculty council, the highest governing committee for the faculty, and I was on the board of directors for the Canadian Medical Association last year.
I learned intimately this past year that the boundaries of freedom of expression in Canada have been severely limited as it pertains to speech in support of health and human rights for Palestinians and Palestine. My experience of institutional anti-Palestinian racism and limitations on our freedom of speech parallels the stories of many who have chosen to speak out about human rights violations in Palestine.
Anti-Palestinian racism is a form of racism and discrimination adjacent to Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, but it is also distinct from both. It is a form of racism that seeks to silence, exclude, erase, stereotype and dehumanize Palestinians and their allies. This often results in severe sanctions and disciplinary actions that profoundly impact the lives of Palestinians and their allies, a practice that has been advised against by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. This is a freedom of expression issue.
Last year around this time, a family doctor and faculty member shared my social media posts and publicly mischaracterized them as anti-Semitic and inflammatory and sent them to the university and the Canadian Medical Association. He was someone who was neither a patient nor a direct colleague or supervisor of mine. My social media posts were from my personal accounts, and in no way was I trying to speak from any of my places of employment or affiliation. These posts were criticized as being inflammatory, racist and anti-Semitic simply because they advocated for Palestinians having the same human rights as everyone else, aligning with international law.
I met with senior leadership of the Canadian Medical Association, and my social media posts were criticized. I was pressured to put together a public apology and provide personal one-on-one apologies to certain people in high-ranking positions and who hold influence in the association. Soon after, I received a phone call from the university informing me of my immediate and indefinite suspension, citing a level-three breach of professionalism for my social media posts. A level-three professionalism breach means repeated instances of an individual's behaviour and conduct despite intervention, or a concern for the individual's clinical care or quality of care of services.
No prior conversations were held and no concerns were ever raised before regarding my social media posts or professionalism. Patient safety was raised as a concern. However, in my duties as a resident in public health, I was completing a rotation at the Public Health Agency of Canada without any individuals working under me whom I was responsible for supervising and also without direct patient contact. The university's professionalism subcommittee, which reviewed my case, recommended immediate reinstatement without any disciplinary action. They suggested an apology be issued by the university, which they never gave. I feel deeply harmed by the university, which caused emotional and psychological distress and permanently altered my career path in public health.
As I sat on faculty council this past year, I witnessed multiple cases of medical students' social media posts being discussed as professionalism concerns, and it was clear that a fair process was not being followed. It was shared during these meetings that there were no clear bylaws or processes, and their legal counsel was creating the processes as they went. There were statements shared in these meetings that were rooted in anti-Palestinian racism and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate without any accountability.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has informed me of multiple complaints against me of a similar nature related to social media posts and not related to my clinical competency and conduct within the clinical setting. This is taking away time and resources from me, my legal counsel and, ultimately, the college itself in managing legitimate cases related to professional competence and conduct.
My purpose today is to ask the standing committee for support in holding institutions to account for overstepping in their policing of people's right to free speech and to recognize the appalling normalization of anti-Palestinian racism in educational institutions and places of employment, such as the University of Ottawa and the Canadian Medical Association. This is a non-partisan issue. There are solutions that are already being proposed, including Conservative private member's Bill C-257, an act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act, protecting against discrimination based on political belief.
Last week, the Alberta premier, along with the justice minister, said that their government will review professional regulatory bodies such as the College of Physicians and Surgeons, which play the important role of regulating professional competence and conduct, and introduce legislation next year to limit how they can police their own members on their speech.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
We'll now go to the Canadian Constitution Foundation. We have Christine Van Geyn, litigation director, on Zoom.
Christine, go ahead on your opening statement, please. You have five minutes.
Christine Van Geyn Litigation Director, Canadian Constitution Foundation
Thank you for inviting me today.
I'm the litigation director at the CCF, which is a legal charity that fights for fundamental freedoms in Canada.
I am fascinated by the question proposed by the committee today, which is the means government should have at its disposal to ensure the exercise of freedom of expression. Frankly, the government does not need more means. The government needs to do less. We already have the right to freedom of expression guaranteed in paragraph 2(b) of the charter. Before the charter, we had the right to freedom of expression protected in the Constitution Act, 1867, which is similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom, whose unwritten constitution protects the right of public discussion.
We are not granted these rights to freedom of expression by our government. We possess them by virtue of being human beings. Throughout human history, it's government that has been the greatest threat to our right to free speech, whether it was the execution of Socrates for his public philosophy, the brutal Star Chamber of King Henry VII, which punished those who printed without a licence, or the attempted censorship of New York newsman Peter Zenger for his criticism of the American colonial government. Governments have tried to censor speech they don't like for as long as we have had governments.
It's hard for me to even know where to start on this question. Do I talk about the threat to freedom of the press, the problem of imprisoning people for words alone, the problem of using human rights tribunals to regulate art and comedy, or, as Dr. Ge brought up, professional regulators undermining the right of freedom of speech for so many Canadians in those professions? These are all real, live issues today, and the source of the problem is government.
Consider the Alberta press case, which involved a law that compelled newspapers to publish government rebuttals to criticism. That case was from 1937, so fears about so-called fake news or misinformation are not new. Even though the Supreme Court struck down that Alberta law, the silencing of the press continues today. For example, we at the CCF challenged an amendment to the Canadian Elections Act that ended up being struck down in 2019. That provision prohibited false statements about political candidates during an election period. It even captured innocent statements and mistakes, with fines of up to $50,000 and five years in prison. We were successful in having it struck down.
While not censorship in the classic sense, millions of Canadians lost access to news because of this government's Online News Act, done in the name of saving the news industry. The act has backfired spectacularly, with Meta refusing to comply, then blocking news on its platforms. There's the Online Streaming Act brought in by this government, which put the CRTC in charge of regulating the content of companies like YouTube, Netflix and Spotify, including user-generated content. The free press is essential. It's an essential check on the authoritarian impulses of government. The actions of this government continue to undermine it.
In criminal law power, censorship by criminalizing words is nothing new, even though we're well aware of the problems with it. Consider Québécois Jehovah's Witness Aimé Boucher, who, in the 1940s, was convicted of seditious libel for accusing the Quebec government of being too close to the Catholic Church. That viewpoint was condemned at the time, but it's perhaps mainstream today. Consider how expressing the idea that gay people should have equal rights was an unacceptable view 60 years ago. Thanks to the free speech of people who publicly advocated for change, we now have equal rights in Canada for the LGBTQ community. Free speech is important for those who are in minorities, whether it's a minority viewpoint or a minority with some immutable characteristic.
Free speech is how we define the contours of our other rights. It is not a value for the right or the left. It is a non-partisan right for all Canadians, yet this government continues to undermine it. One of the purposes of free expression is to allow for debate on even the most controversial topics, because vigorous debate is how we best settle our disagreements, including disagreements about who should lead government. Free debate on contentious issues can't happen if the people currently in government are allowed to outlaw opposing points of view. The right to express your words and ideas goes to the core of who we are as individuals.
The government doesn't need more means. It needs to stop trying to silence speech.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
Thank you very much. You were right on time, Ms. Van Geyn.
We'll move now to the Chaire de recherche France-Québec.
Mr. Rainville, I think you're up first. You may share your time or you may not. You're free to do either. You have five minutes.
Pierre Rainville Co-Chair, Chaire de recherche France-Québec sur les enjeux contemporains de la liberté d'expression
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the members of the committee for inviting me to appear.
You're inviting us to speak to you about a very specific fundamental right. Freedom of expression is much more than a fundamental right. It's the bedrock of the vast majority of fundamental rights. There is no freedom of religion, for example, without freedom of speech.
It is appropriate to make an observation before formulating avenues to protect freedom of expression.
The first observation is that it's too easy to forget that angering or disturbing remarks fall specifically under freedom of expression. The Supreme Court of Canada has said that over and over again. The second observation is that freedom of expression is sometimes mistreated, including by federal regulators, as well as Parliament itself.
I'll give you some illustrations, starting with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC.
In 2020, the title of a book that may be considered offensive by some was mentioned on air on the Société Radio‑Canada. However, there is nothing racist about this book. It's one of the books that left its mark on Quebec in the 1970s. However, the CRTC blamed Radio-Canada, and went so far as to require a written public apology from the Crown corporation. The Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, or FPJQ, was alarmed by this decision, as were a very large number of Radio-Canada journalists. The Federal Court of Appeal intervened and blamed the CRTC for ignoring freedom of expression and for underestimating the risks of self-censorship created by its own decision.
The Canadian Parliament isn't blameless either. Look at the brand new crime of Holocaust denial that was adopted in 2022.
It was rushed through, buried in a 450-page budget bill. The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs apologized for doing things this way, as did the Canadian Bar Association, or CBA. The process didn't provide parliamentarians with the analytical framework they should have when a law infringes on freedom of expression. My point is simple. There need to be institutional safeguards, parliamentary safeguards, so that bills that impede freedom of expression aren't rushed through.
I can give another example, that of the current Bill C-63, which concerns online harms. I'll be explicit. This bill is valid and legitimate in a number of respects, but it contains provisions that undermine freedom of artistic creation and contravene the teachings of the Supreme Court of Canada. I can talk more about that if you wish. Surprisingly, that same bill prohibits counselling certain perfectly legal sexual activities. The infringement on freedom of expression seems glaring to me.
Considering the passage of federal legislation that would proclaim the importance of freedom of artistic expression, as well as journalistic expression, as other states have done, could be a solution. This legislation would also remind us that the mere act of offending another person is not a valid reason to silence speech.
Mathilde Barraband Co-Chair, Chaire de recherche France-Québec sur les enjeux contemporains de la liberté d'expression
Our research chair is working on a status report on freedom of expression by comparing France and Quebec. In particular, we're targeting three freedoms: freedom of religion, academic freedom and freedom of creation. I'm going to talk to you about freedom of creation.
There are 22 countries around the world that have enshrined freedom of artistic expression in their constitutions. Many other countries, such as France, have had legislation in place since 2016 to protect that particular term. Canada, for its part, hasn't yet deemed this specific protection useful.
If France and other countries have chosen to have greater protection for freedom of creation, it's because art is an expression that often challenges the standards of beauty, but also of good, and in this regard is disturbing. However, for that very reason, it can promote the democratic process, the search for the truth and contribute to personal growth, which are the great Canadian principles of protecting freedom of expression.
While the Supreme Court has recognized that artistic expression is at the heart of the relative values of freedom of expression, if Canadian parliaments sometimes vote motions in support of mistreated artists, we have to admit that this recognition and support are more timid here than in other countries, particularly in European bodies.
However, this protection has rarely been so necessary. In fact, for some time now, in Canada, as in Europe and the United States, a number of political groups have been using art controversies to advance their cause. Art is therefore at the centre of both a conservative cultural war and progressive struggles. The former attacks cultural productions that consider sexual and ethnic diversity. The latter uses famous works to draw attention to the climate emergency, for example, or denounce racism and sexism in art.
As confirmed by the field studies I conduct in Quebec's cultural community, the work of cultural institutions has become considerably complicated in the past few years, and self-censorship is becoming entrenched. Perhaps additional constitutional or legislative protection would help to address that. However, above all, Canada must develop a culture of freedom of artistic expression. To that end, more modest measures than a legislative initiative could be taken right now, which I would like to discuss.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Thank you, Ms. Barraband.
How it works is the first round will be six minutes.
We'll start with the Conservative Party and Mr. Jivani, please.
October 30th, 2024 / 4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Jamil Jivani Conservative Durham, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Certainly, this is a very important topic, and I appreciate the witnesses for being here.
I have some questions for Ms. Van Geyn, who I think gave an excellent set of opening remarks.
Ms. Van Geyn, I'd like to speak with you in particular about Justin Trudeau's censorship agenda, which has been implemented by the Liberal Party with help, certainly, from the NDP. When we talk about the censorship agenda, we're talking primarily about two pieces of legislation: Bill C-11 and Bill C-18.
I'm sure you're familiar with them, but just for the sake of being on the same page, Bill C-11 refers to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal bureaucracy gaining more control over what Canadians can access on streaming platforms online. Bill C-18 refers to Justin Trudeau and the federal bureaucracy having more control over the news that Canadians can see, which has limited access to news on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
I'd like to start by asking you, Ms. Van Geyn, if you share the concerns of many Canadians, who are worried about Justin Trudeau's censorship agenda and Bill C-11 and Bill C-18.
Litigation Director, Canadian Constitution Foundation
I would add to that list Bill C-63, which has the potential to be one of the most censorious pieces of legislation that I have seen in a really long time. Bill C-63, the online harms act, would increase penalties for criminalized speech and for hate-motivated crimes to life in prison. Part of the concern around that is using these heightened penalties to overcharge criminal defendants and to create pressure for plea deals for lower-level offences when there is an argument that the Crown might make that there is a hate element. Even if it's not present, it can be charged, and this overcharging leads to pressure to plead out.
Another concern we have about Bill C-63 is that it would allow for someone who fears a future hate crime speech to request a judge to put conditions on the would-be speaker. Those could be things like an ankle monitor or even imprisonment, and this is for future speech that has not yet taken place. This is incredibly chilling.
Bill C-63 would also create a civil mechanism for people to complain to the Human Rights Commission about speech. It's a return of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which was rightly repealed for dragging before the commission journalists and members of the clergy. There is no cost to bringing a complaint, but there's great cost to the person complained about. We have seen human rights tribunals bring before them comedians—that's in a Quebec context, though.
Giving this power to these commissions will chill expression. I did not have time in my five minutes to mention Bill C-63. I understand that there is a separate committee hearing that will address that, but I wanted to put on the record our serious concern about that.
With respect to the Online News Act and the Online Streaming Act, while perhaps not censorship in the most classic form, I do share the concerns of millions of Canadians who have lost access to news as a result of the Online News Act. I share the concerns of a lot of academics and of Canadian content creators about the regulation of user-generated content on social media platforms like YouTube. I'm a YouTube creator myself. I have one of the largest...or I think probably the largest YouTube channel about Canadian constitutional law, perhaps—
Litigation Director, Canadian Constitution Foundation
—and it will censor that.
Conservative
Jamil Jivani Conservative Durham, ON
Ms. Van Geyn, if I could just ask a follow-up to that because the Trudeau Liberals very much like to misrepresent their censorship agenda as being solely focused on big corporations, but as you know, it does include—
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
While I do want to hear Mr. Jivani's question, he's making an assertion as to what our intention is, which, I think, you have ruled before as being not reasonable.
Conservative
Jamil Jivani Conservative Durham, ON
You didn't let me finish the question, so you're getting ahead of yourself.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
You didn't need to get there. You already said it.
Conservative
Jamil Jivani Conservative Durham, ON
I know you're an eager guy.
If I could just ask a question to Ms. Van Geyn, you mentioned that user-generated content is included in Justin Trudeau's censorship agenda, which law professor Michael Geist has detailed in a series of blogs, explaining that it's not just a matter of focusing on corporations.
What is the importance of this censorship agenda including user-generated content?
Conservative
Litigation Director, Canadian Constitution Foundation
The effect is that it's the government putting its thumb on the scale of what content Canadians see, and that in itself is inherently censorious.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
Thank you very much, Ms. Van Geyn and Mr. Jivani.
We'll move to the Liberals now for six minutes.
Ms. Dhillon, please go ahead for six minutes.